We have experienced the following on stations, usually right after a major change is made such as returning to HD service or adding an HD2 or 3. It goes on for a few days or weeks until the engineer in charge figures out that something is wrong and probably gets on the horn with the manufacturer. Our receiver starts out in analog, in the usual way until it locks onto the HD1. When it eventualy loses the HD signal, it goes silent, popping between the HD-1 and silence, never to return to the analog mode. We cannot even force it to remain analog. What can we tell or Email the engineer?
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Please fix the HD-1!
- Thread starter Ai4i
- Start date
I'm told this is a new software glitch which affects HD systems of specific transmitter manufacturers. And I've also heard the poor station engineers are being caught in a classic HD catch-22, with the transmitter manufacturers claiming it's an iBiquity software issue and iBiquity support referring the problem back to the transmitter maker. They just point to each other. And the engineer's stuck in the middle with management screaming at him to just "get it fixed."
Just another reason for engineering to look for employment in another field. Welcome to the world of HD Radio.
Just another reason for engineering to look for employment in another field. Welcome to the world of HD Radio.
A very interesting glitch. Is there only one subject radio doing this? Is plain old analog still there?
It sounds as though the radio itself is still convinced that it is decoding HD, and/or perhaps its switching gate is malfunctioning,
not feeding analog when it thinks it is.
Maybe it's that new fancy safe solder. :
It sounds as though the radio itself is still convinced that it is decoding HD, and/or perhaps its switching gate is malfunctioning,
not feeding analog when it thinks it is.
Maybe it's that new fancy safe solder. :
Both the Radiosophy on the night table and the JVC in my car and both work flawlessly on other stations. Usually a call to the station resolves the issue within a few days. Somehow the radio is being told, "we are not in hybrid mode, there is no analog fallback, pay no attention to the sinosoidal man behind the curtain".Tom Wells said:
This underscores the need to have a switch on every HD radio to allow the user force it to analog mode. Enough people have complained about switching issues that manufacturers should take this need seriously. It should not be buried 3 or 4 levels deep in a software menu where the average person can't find it.
ai4i said:
In the same vein, while both driving out of LA on Wednesday and back yesterday, KNX had significant synchronization issues between its HD and analog signals, with a duration of about 12 to 14 syllables in speech. The signal was degraded, overall, and at every bridge, terrain irregularity and such on the outskirts of LA (meaning not in the market...) the HD dropped out and the analog was way ahead. When the HD recaptured, it "echoed" and was overall unlistenable. Rather than turn off HD, I simply used a different station for traffic report verification (the Sirius traffic is so often wrong or incomplete!).
An easy way to turn this off should be featured. Or, even better, a way to separately activate AM HD and FM HD, so we could permanently deactivate the AM operation.
Yes, David. Absolutely. "Permanently."
Enough of this, already. Can we please stop trashing what's left of AM radio just to assuage the egos of Glynn Walden and the equivalent nitwit at Greater Media??
AM-HD was "over" two years ago. Nobody's listening. Give it up and turn off the interference.
Enough of this, already. Can we please stop trashing what's left of AM radio just to assuage the egos of Glynn Walden and the equivalent nitwit at Greater Media??
AM-HD was "over" two years ago. Nobody's listening. Give it up and turn off the interference.
Since it's football season a lot of stations may be broadcasting live sports in "ballgame mode" or turning the HD transmitter off and forgetting to reset it to the normal settings.
Complain to the stations directly saying that you won't listen because your HD radio keeps dropping. If they feel like they have enough HD listeners to justify the HD transmitter, they should listen to the complaints of the HD listeners.
Complain to the stations directly saying that you won't listen because your HD radio keeps dropping. If they feel like they have enough HD listeners to justify the HD transmitter, they should listen to the complaints of the HD listeners.
There is a setting in the exporter that can be set that keeps the radios from blending back to analog on HD1 if the digital signal fades. Whatever station the original poster is listening to obviously has their set wrong. If it's multiple stations, I'd guess the same engineer is taking care of all of them. The factory default is for this setting to allow blend in every exporter I've seen.
As Nick pointed out, the purpose of the switch is sports. Flip the blend switch to off, fall out of delay on the analog and voila - sports in real time on the analog signal while the HD goes on with its normal 7 seconds or so of delay. In an HD TV world though, I'm not sure I really get the point. Are that many people listening in the stadium to make the hassle worthwhile? Personally, I wouldn't bother doing this or dropping out of profanity delay. With the potty mouth athletes these days, you need it.
As Nick pointed out, the purpose of the switch is sports. Flip the blend switch to off, fall out of delay on the analog and voila - sports in real time on the analog signal while the HD goes on with its normal 7 seconds or so of delay. In an HD TV world though, I'm not sure I really get the point. Are that many people listening in the stadium to make the hassle worthwhile? Personally, I wouldn't bother doing this or dropping out of profanity delay. With the potty mouth athletes these days, you need it.
radiogooroo said:
If just one or two of the people have People Meters, this is absolutely worth it.
If you do the math, there is about one meter for every 3000 people (rough average) in a market. So at a 50,000 capacity stadium, you might have around a dozen meters, which could get you a very nice listening spike. It's very well worth the effort to kill the delay on analog during play by play... you can always have it in for pre and post game interviews where there might be language issues.
I don't think that the possibility of a bad word being heard during play by play is very high.
We are a (somewhat) HAPPY CAMPER We just fingered out how to lock this JVC deck into digital OR analogue mode until we change stations again, and we don't have to press toooo many buttons to do it!
To paraphrase the old radio promo, "When ever I am in Miami, I listen to Serious Jazz".
We just fingered out how to lock this JVC deck into digital OR analogue mode until we change stations again, and we don't have to press toooo many buttons to do it!To paraphrase the old radio promo, "When ever I am in Miami, I listen to Serious Jazz".
David Eduardo:
How many people listening in stadiums do you suppose are listening on open speakers a PPM could pick up? I'd guess not many.
The TV broadcast of a recent Texans game contained the F bomb. A player was picked up by a shotgun mic very clearly.
How many people listening in stadiums do you suppose are listening on open speakers a PPM could pick up? I'd guess not many.
The TV broadcast of a recent Texans game contained the F bomb. A player was picked up by a shotgun mic very clearly.
radiogooroo said:
There is a pass-through adapter, and while it is a leap of faith to think everyone would use it in every case, some do because Arbitron is so persistent in coaching the metered panel.
With the recent court rulings on spontaneous utterances, the fear of the fine may be much less... and radio play by play does not tend to follow play with shotgun mikes as the impact of sound is much greater with a linked video component (although I did soccer broadcasts many years ago with directional mikes precisely so I could capture the cussing and dialogue).
Nick said:
Why?
People with meters are coached to carry the meter at all times, not to carray a radio at all times. In fact, I believe they are instructed not to change their lifestyle because of the meter... and since people can be on the panel for up to 24 months, carrying a radio when you don't need or want one will get tired after a few days...
ai4i said:
There are two kinds of delay...
Profanity delay is used in the studio to dump bad words prior to the program content being distributed to all the audio chains a station might have.
HD delay is put on the analog audio so that the digital audio and analog audio are broadcast simultaneously. Since digital has a processing delay, the analog is delayed so that if a radio neads to fold back from or go into digital mode, the fold, other than fidelity, will be seamless.
Stations in PPM markets must encode each transmitter and web stream separately, so the profanity delay goes ahead of the generally separate processing for digital HD, analog and digital web streams. There are some exceptions, but the answer to your question is that if the station runs a profanity delay, that is generally inserted before audio gets split for the web and on-air signal. For sports play by play, to be in real time both the HD and profanity delays would have to be off.
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